Passers-by Spot Moose On The Loose In Union

Passers-by Spot A Moose

October 05, 1993|By PAUL MARKS; Courant Staff Writer

UNION — Out this way, folks don't need to tune in "Northern Exposure" to watch a moose saunter through town. It didn't pass down Main Street like the critter in the TV sitcom, but a visiting bull moose nevertheless caused a stir in this town.

The beast interrupted breakfast at Goodhall's West Restaurant just north of Exit 74 off I-84.

The sighting was first made by James F. Smith of Woodstock on Friday and was confirmed Monday. Smith, a self-employed logger for 18 years, had stopped at the restaurant that morning before hauling a load of logs to a sawmill in Vermont. After eating, Smith, 36, and a friend were heading for their trucks when they noticed the moose standing near some horses in a nearby field.

"We were talking when we heard a rustle behind us," Smith said. "The moose was actually 25 feet behind us behind a steel fence. We saw the broad side of a dark hide. And then we saw the hump."

He ran to his truck to get an auto-focus camera he keeps for just such occasions.

"It was a young bull with approximately 5 to 5 1/2 -foot-wide rack," he said. "I would say, the top of his head, it would have to be between 7 to 7 1/2 feet.

"He was over 1,000 pounds, I know that." Frank Sedlak was across town at Goodhall's Garage, and heard about the moose sighting from owner Wallace Goodhall. By the time he got to the horse pasture the animal had moved on, and Sedlak had to search awhile before he saw it swimming in nearby Hamilton Reservoir.

"I think the horses probably wondered what the hell kind of horse that was," he said with a laugh.

A moose on the loose in Union is unusual, but hardly unprecedented. "We have more moose than you know about," said state Conservation Officer Gerald Leighton.

He said the sighting was confirmed Monday, when Smith gave him two photographs he had taken of the moose. "I can tell it's a moose," Leighton said of the pictures, but the images were too

small to reproduce in a newspaper.

Leighton said moose enter the fall rutting -- or mating -- season earlier than white-tailed deer, which begin mating in November, and the bulls wander for miles in search of mates. He said a cow moose was spotted in Union -- to the south of I-84 -- throughout the spring and summer. He would like to see the two find each other.

Maine is the only New England state with a sizable moose population, although the big ungulates -- the scientific term for mammals with hooves -- also are common in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Mark Ellingwood, a deer biologist at the state Department of Environmental Protection's wildlife station in Franklin, said the regular sighting of moose in northern Connecticut is "a relatively recent phenomenon, and is a reflection of expanding moose numbers in northern New England states. There is no resident population in Connecticut."

New England moose can range up to 7 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh as much as 1,200 pounds. As long as they stay in the forests and swamps of Union and other rural towns, they pose no problem, Ellingwood said. Unfortunately, he said, a moose on I-84 would be a serious road hazard